Thread: Options

Over the last 3 weeks, I've learned that there are barely enough qualified executive staff at my radio station to go around. None of them want to do the job of being the general manager. So, guess who gets to do that job again?

Anyway, I've decided that I need another project to do during my reign that will define my time in office. It's come down to two options:
1) Change radio frequencies at the radio station to allow us to have a larger broadcast range. Our previous broadcast range was cut short due to incompetencies of past GMs. The only way to expand our range without HUGE legal fights getting into state sovereignty issues is to change frequencies. The nice thing about this is that it opens up the case for the radio station getting funding for a bigger, better broadcast tower.

2) Petition the students of the school/the student government for a fee increase. Currently, at a fee of $2.50 a student, that brings in about $50-55k a year, which is spent on executive staff salaries, t-shirts, Mayfest (our big thank you music festival to the students), etc. The fee increase we would ask for is $4.50 a student for a total fee of $7.00 per student.
The extra funds would be spent on upgrading the quickly ageing equipment both at our radio tower on top of Wyly tower and in our offices.
After our equipment is replaced, that money could go into things such as more music concerts, making t-shirts free, possibly increasing the executive staff pay rate to above minimum wage to help convince students to stay on executive staff, etc.

So, what should Mr. White make his priority?

Go for the frequency change. That seems like it would better set things up for the future. If it's a legacy you want, then laying the foundation for bigger and better things is what you are after.

A fee increase, while it may benefit the short-term, will be long forgotten in 5 years. Setting up for the future paves the way for bigger and better fee increases.

Originally Posted by Arreo

but I would be slightly worried about what a change might do to your listenership...

kinda like a name change...

Well, a large majority of our listenership is from the school itself. I'm willing to bet out of the 150k listens per week that we get (we only have a local pop of 50k within our broadcast range, which makes us the best in Texas, Arkansas, and Lousiana--excluding broadcasts of LSU football games), 90% of those are students. If we did a frequency change, what we would do is to send out multiple emails to the entire body of people at Louisiana Tech University, we would also begin a long run up/ramp up of promos saying, "This is 89.1...yada yada...we're switching to xx.x on the...of...." There is also a large possibility that we could and would take out ads in the local paper, which would actually be pretty cheap. There's also facebook stuff, etc. That's what our promo department and News and PR department are for.

Rest assured, that if a change of frequency can be finagled (there is a lot of FCC red tape), then we will effectively communicate that to our listeners.

All that said, there are a few other little benefits to a fee increase: we could hire back our engineer. He's only 6k a year, but we had to let him go to make ourselves "look good" to the hire ups who are looking at everybody including student organizations for austerity measures. I'm about 80% sure we need him to be FCC legal.
We could also have the money to outright buy and install a new transmitter.

Then again, the administration has been more willing to help us out of late. They did just buy us a new music server for online broadcasting and are footing the bill for the actual broadcasting of our signal online. So, securing funding for a bigger transmitter may be possible if we can show that we have the legal ability to broadcast farther.

This is obviously a lot to think about and is why I'm polling all of you.

Originally Posted by DJ Mr. White

Well, a large majority of our listenership is from the school itself. I'm willing to bet out of the 150k listens per week that we get (we only have a local pop of 50k within our broadcast range, which makes us the best in Texas, Arkansas, and Lousiana--excluding broadcasts of LSU football games), 90% of those are students. If we did a frequency change, what we would do is to send out multiple emails to the entire body of people at Louisiana Tech University, we would also begin a long run up/ramp up of promos saying, "This is 89.1...yada yada...we're switching to xx.x on the...of...." There is also a large possibility that we could and would take out ads in the local paper, which would actually be pretty cheap. There's also facebook stuff, etc. That's what our promo department and News and PR department are for.

Rest assured, that if a change of frequency can be finagled (there is a lot of FCC red tape), then we will effectively communicate that to our listeners.

All that said, there are a few other little benefits to a fee increase: we could hire back our engineer. He's only 6k a year, but we had to let him go to make ourselves "look good" to the hire ups who are looking at everybody including student organizations for austerity measures. I'm about 80% sure we need him to be FCC legal.
We could also have the money to outright buy and install a new transmitter.

Then again, the administration has been more willing to help us out of late. They did just buy us a new music server for online broadcasting and are footing the bill for the actual broadcasting of our signal online. So, securing funding for a bigger transmitter may be possible if we can show that we have the legal ability to broadcast farther.

This is obviously a lot to think about and is why I'm polling all of you.

It's a sad situation Rice University is going thru the austerity shit as well their station is up to sold to a Muzak Co.The station is trying to save it thru petition. The fee increase may be your only hope in that it will fund itself. If the administration is still willing to fund then I would do both as a back up just in case the admin bail on you.

Yeah, the more I think about things, doing both may be the best. I also think that setting up the radio station to do these things may be all I can do. So, this will be a great example of using policy in politics to influence things later down the road. It's not that I'm going to be lazy about it; it's that these types of processes can be rather time consuming. For instance, getting reapproval to broadcast at 89.1 FM is something that had to be started this last year. It's pretty easy to do (the FCC even has it set up so you can use the internet), but there's all that bureaucracy.

wouldn't make sense NOT to do both. they go hand in hand imo.

although, you could probably lower the fee a little. as a student, i would be puzzled as to why you're almost tripling the budget, when it ran fairly well at the previous cost.

Originally Posted by CanadianPersian

wouldn't make sense NOT to do both. they go hand in hand imo.

although, you could probably lower the fee a little. as a student, i would be puzzled as to why you're almost tripling the budget, when it ran fairly well at the previous cost.

We'd be tripling it so we could actually afford to replace equipment. As it stands, if shit goes pear shaped with regards to our equipment, we're most likely having to cancel our music festival and then if that's not enough cutting people's wages. Cutting people's wages may not seem like much, but our executive staff put in a hell of a lot of work, especially the upper echelon. They work 20 hours a week instead of another higher paying job, doing research, etc.